Photon Sketchup Model

General
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So, I made a Sketchup model of the Photon if anyone is interested. Both with and without pins. I put it on the 3D Warehouse for anyone who is interested.

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Those look awesome! :heart_eyes:

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Cool! :smile:

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I just printed a copy out on my 3D printer and it doesnt seem to power up. Perhaps an Elite can offer some insight! I wonder is it because you left out the solder joints? :smile:

On a more serious note, could you explain the process you went through to create this excellent model & how long it took. (at a high level).

Super!

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Heh :slight_smile: I’d be impressed with your 3D Printer if it could print that fast. As to the how:

  • Used an excellent [addon called Eagleup][1] that outputs the data from Eagle into Sketchup.
  • Edited the various textures that Eagleup made so that they more closely match the actual thing
  • For the common components (0603, 0402…) there are premade ones easily available on the warehouse, or through Eagleup’s website; for the others I looked at the datasheet and copied the rough dimensions
  • All told, it probably took about 5 hours?

Edit: should also note that if you want to try something similar, eagleup doesn’t handle the castellations well, and they have to be fixed.
[1]: https://eagleup.wordpress.com/

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And just for shits and giggles, here’s a basic version of the P1 in Sketchup form

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Super nice! I don’t recall, does SketchUp export to some other useful 3D formats?

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It’ll export to Collada DAE, and STL. The pro version might be able to do more than that, but I don’t have it, so…

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Maybe I can help get you started!

First off, you're going to need a multi-extruder printer. Then you'll need some low-resistance filament. And you'll probably need some filament for shielding. I still haven't found any wireless filament, though. Don't forget the LED and cyan filaments. I think the cyan filament is the one that makes or breaks it. Did you try to print it using cyan the first time?

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Don’t forget the various rare earth elements, too. Those get terribly tricky.

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Hella nice job @mumblepins!! :+1:

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Absolutely wonderful! (Maybe Particle will take it for their official 3D model?) Could I perhaps ask for a 3D model of the P0 as well? I think it would look stunning on a 3D view of a PCB in KiCAD…

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Wait a minute–you have the P0 sitting on top of the Photon module 3D image. Extracting just the P0 module shouldn’t be that difficult, no?

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They are different modules, so that probably won’t work:

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Well…I was actually referring to the excellent 3D Sketchup model of the Photon module by @mumblepins, that he already had the P0 chip pretty much depicted in the 3D Photon model. I’m no 3D expert (or 3D beginner, either!), but it seems that it shouldn’t be too hard to just isolate that portion of the Sketchup project as a P0 3D model. Thanks for the photo anyway–that P1 is a lot bigger than the P0!

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@WebDust21, you’re right, it’s actually quite straightforward. I’m on my phone right now, so this might not be quite right, but if you open the model in Sketchup, it’s made out of several parts grouped together in a component, so if you just right click on it and click explode, possibly several times, eventually you’ll be able to just drag off the P0 module by itself.

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@mumblepins: quick question. Do you have Sketchup Make or Sketchup Pro? To use the model in KiCad, it has to be a VRML format…which is only available on Sketchup Pro. Actually, through Wings3D, I should be able to support Nendo NDO, 3D Studio 3DS, Adobe Illustrator AI, Lightwave or Modo LWO/LXO, Wavefront OBJ, Postscript PS/EPS, Stereolithography STL, or an SVG path.

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I have Sketchup Make, but I just reinstalled Windows, ∴ I reinstalled Sketchup, so it came with a free Pro trial, so while I have that, I’ll export in as many formats as I can. I also split off the P0 module. I have no idea if all of these exports worked successfully, so hopefully one will work for what you’re looking for! Here’s a Dropbox link to all of them.

Formats included:

  • Sketchup
  • 3DS
  • DWG
  • DXF
  • DAE
  • FBX
  • IFC
  • KMZ
  • OBJ
  • VRML
  • XSI
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BEAUTIFUL! Many thanks! I was able to use the OBJ file, importing it into Wings3D. It took me some time to figure out how to get the scale down from 1,000/mm to 1/mm in Wings3D…after that, it worked beautifully. Unfortunately, the logo on top of the chip is missing (probably due to the OBJ format), but hey, the chip is there! It took me some time to get the Wings3D VRML output properly sized in KiCAD (neither program really could stomach the 1000 scale, but hey, they’re both freeware!) However, there’s this black “shadow” that displays on KiCAD. At the moment, I don’t know where it’s coming from:

FWIW, I highly recommend KiCAD for designing schematics/PCBs: www.kicad-pcb.org. It outputs industry-standard GERBER files (including quite a few other formats), and you can use any PCB vendor you would like, as it’s not tied to a particular manufacturing house. It’s just just slightly more complicated to use than ExpressPCB, but worlds more powerful.

Now @mumblepins, if only I could buy you some coffee :wink:. Not in the Ohio area by any chance, I assume?

edit: Selected all faces in Wings3D, exported selection as VRML, and voilà…the shadow is gone.

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Nope. New Jersey. Thanks though :smiley: